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In the ubuntu-wiki I have read, that with older proprietary fglrx amd drivers you have to set the graphic-cards fan speed manually to a certain amount, before starting 3d-programs, or maybe games with wine.

I am not able to download and install later drivers or driver corrections, so this is the driver I have to deal with.

Do I have to manually set the fan speed of my graphics-card or will it happen automatically? I have tested a demoscene demo, and I listened to the fans in my computer, but nothing has happened. In the ubuntu-wiki was also to be read, that with older drivers the graphicscard-fan will run at 100% all the time. In my situation this is not the case.

You see from above, the ati driver card is running 'hot' around 68degC, because it is using the radeon ( free ) driver.two CPU had around 40degC coretemp, my room temp is around 30degC.

If I go to install the fglrx or ati / amd driver, the GPU temp will become around 55-57degC, a 10degC cooler, very much cooler and thus you can predict what would be the advantage... prolong life span..

I suggest you experiment a bit on lm-sensors and sensors applet, and check to see that your ati card is running cooler.

EDIT,now running another distros with fglrx installed, take a look at the sensors output.

Wayne, thanks for your help. But my question has not been answered yet. Will the graphicscards-fan adjust itself when I run 3d-apps? Or do I have to set this manually? Temperature seems to be ok, but what if I have lots of cpu load? The information of my sensors I have made when the system was idle.

The core question: Do I have to adjust the fan speed, before running 3d-apps or will it happen automatically?

Can't really answer your question, because I do not bother to check fan speed.I use simple , layman method on the box..

By the way, your HD5700 series is NOT legacy ( usually 4xxx and below)my 5450 is still using the most current driver 13.1I think the current fglrx driver and future beta driver should work for your HD5700 card until AMD tell you it won't support.

Just me only on this desktop, skip if you are not interested.... my desktop had slim casing, the ATI card was mounted in such a way that its fan is blowing directly to the power supply! and that is a poor heat transfer design. poor airflow with casing closed.Just too bad I did not know that issue because of the warranty sticker covering the casing and it was still under warranty then.

True enough, this desktop had one-year warranty, on around 11.5 month, it started to have trouble booting. Often it did not want to boot up, as it was under warranty for 2 more weeks I asked for service, the serviceman is kind enough to tell me a lot of problems with this casing design ( well, I was happy when the serviceman told me the truth and gave me good tips) and he changed almost everything for me, motherboard, driver cards, power supply, etc except hard disk . and he pointed out to me why it was poor airflow and advised me then to run with open side casing..he has repaired quite a lot of this desktop..

I took that advice, and run that box with side casing open, added one 25w AC fan at the back of the casing, blowing the air to force circulation , when my ambient temp is way too high like 30-32 degC, and when I see the cpu/gpu sensors are too high, I simply turn on AC fan and within 10 minutes all temps are down..nothing work better than force airflow.. keeping it cool when needed.it had been like that for 2 more years, now this box is about 3-year old, well pass my expectation and I know it will last a lot longer.